


Teach Your Children

by twistedmiracle



Series: Folk Songs [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Dicky seems so down since his friend left Madison, M/M, Shortly after the 4th of July, Suzanne's POV, What has MooMaw been saying?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 06:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14074533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedmiracle/pseuds/twistedmiracle
Summary: MooMaw's been telling Dicky things. Suzanne has to decide what to do about that, if anything. It's probably fine, really.Title from the wonderful 1970s folk song. Here are Crosby, Stills and Nash singing it live with the lyrics superimposed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj8FlXGPcOQ





	Teach Your Children

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand grateful thanks to JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle who offered to beta and then did both a bang-up AND a super-fast job when I popped up randomly to accept that generous offer!! Any remaining mistakes are definitely mine alone.

Suzanne noticed right away how down Dicky was, once his friend Jack went back up to Providence. She knew it would pass, but that didn’t make it easier to see. They baked together, he worked at the day camp, he watched sports with Richard. A day passed, three, a week. He still seemed low, though. She knew he was trying to hide it. He was a good boy, never wanted to burden anyone else. But she knew him well, even after he’d been away for the better part of two years, and he wasn’t hiding it well enough to fool her.

“Why don’t you go visit your MooMaw tomorrow?” she suggested Friday evening as he pretended to watch television with her.

“MooMaw?” he asked, looking a little surprised.

“She’s not getting any younger,” Suzanne said gently. “I know how much you love her. She loves you just as much. More, probably. She misses you while you’re gone at Samwell. Bring over some of that fancy French butter we found on sale and bake something new with her. Make her teach you another family recipe.”

Dicky finally looked interested. He turned on the couch to face her and she muted the show to hear what he might say. She was so happy to see a little more light in his eyes. It made it even easier to see that he’d been so down.

“You think she has any family recipes she hasn’t taught me, yet?” he asked. He looked a little amused but very intrigued. She got the impression she’d accidentally unlocked a big door. She hoped it was actually to another room, instead of an illusion.

She smiled broadly at him. “You know,” she tried, “I think she just might. When I first married your father she had a lot of special things she liked to bring to family gatherings that she refused to teach me how to make.”

“MooMaw did that?” Dicky sounded shocked. “But MooMaw loves you!”

“She loves me now,” Suzanne acknowledged, and hoped Richard wouldn’t be too upset at what she was about to reveal. “But I married her baby before we finished college and then we moved more than two hours away from her when we did graduate. She wasn’t all that crazy about me, at first.”

“What changed?” Dicky asked, leaning closer.

Suzanne wondered if she should just turn the TV off, but then thought that might be a bigger distraction than leaving it muted. “You,” she said, and smiled.

“You had to wait that long?” Dicky sounded a little horrified, since he knew full well that he was born four years after his parents married.

Once Suzanne had finally given Richard a beautiful, perfect little son (born three and a half weeks early after a month of bedrest, too, could she not catch a break anywhere?) William and Carol had suddenly warmed to Suzanne in a way she had come to believe they never would. Carol had cleaned the house top to bottom while Suzanne had recuperated from the Cesarean and hysterectomy in the hospital. She had filled the freezer with casseroles and the house with food and flowers. She had stayed in a hotel to give Suzanne and Richard space but had been there every morning at 7 a.m., just in time to wish her son a good day at work and wait on Suzanne and the baby hand and foot.

She’d stayed nearly three weeks.

Suzanne had cried real tears when Carol had headed back to Madison. She knew she would miss all that help, of course, but it was such a relief to finally feel fully accepted into the family.

“I did,” Suzanne said, simply. No need to belabor the more difficult moments between them. That boy loved his MooMaw half to death, and she was good to him. “But she has been wonderful from the moment you were born. She came and helped for nearly a month! And she made quite a lot of dishes for us when you were tiny. Some of which I am pretty sure I’ve not seen since. So yes, I think she just might have some recipes she hasn’t shared with you yet.”

Dicky’s smile was the first truly happy one she’d seen on his face since he’d returned from the Atlanta airport without his hockey friend. Suzanne smiled back at him, reaching over to squeeze his hand. This was a good idea.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Dicky came home from his MooMaw’s in a mood Suzanne couldn’t quite interpret. Was he … happier? He seemed to be veering between almost spooked and almost giddy.

“Did your MooMaw have a new family recipe for you, Dicky dear?”

“Mm?” he asked, distracted in a way she wasn’t accustomed to. He stared out the window for a moment. “We didn’t bake anything new, no. We actually talked about family stuff. She told me a little about my Uncle Thomas.”

Suzanne felt a stab of discomfort, so she turned to the fridge to hide it. 

“Oh,” she said. “Would you like some sweet tea?” She rummaged around in the fridge for the pitcher, which was behind a few other things.

“Not right now,” he said quietly before suddenly turning and heading for the stairs. “I hope you don’t mind if I take a ‘lil nap before dinner, Mama,” he said, sounding very casual.

“Of course, honey,” she said. “You go on ahead.”

Suzanne poured herself a large glass of tea and got herself some ice. Uncle Thomas. She needed to talk to Richard. If she dared.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

“I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.” Richard said dismissively as they drove home from church Sunday morning. Dicky had stayed on a bit to help clean the kitchen after the luncheon. “Lisa May will drive me home, Mama,” he had promised.

“Thomas is just closer to Samwell, and you know my Mother stayed in touch with him better than anyone else.”

“Do you think she expects Dicky to…” Suzanne found her thoughts veering somewhere uncomfortable, and she rearranged them quickly. “To stay up north? After he graduates?”

“Well, I certainly hope not!” Richard laughed as though Dicky not returning to Georgia after graduation was just silly all around. 

“We both know he isn’t moving back to Madison, honey,” he said kindly, and he took his hand off the steering wheel briefly to squeeze her knee. “What kind of job could he get here? But Atlanta isn’t far and he should have no lack of opportunities there. Why, I could even see our Dicky in a place like Savannah, or Jacksonville. Some big city with lots of young people, lots of jobs, lots going on.”

“Or maybe,” Suzanne was warming to this idea. “Cooking school? Le Cordon Bleu opened that Atlanta campus a while back. Maybe he’d want to do that?”

“Sure,” Richard agreed easily. “But he’s a southerner, Suzanne. He’ll come home. He needs to be where he belongs, where people know him, understand him. Where they speak his language. Those Yankees might be a nice diversion for a bit, but I know our boy. He’s a Georgia peach, through and through. He’ll come home to us. And stay.”

Suzanne smiled. “That sounds so good,” she said, wanting it to be true. “I need to remember, too,” she said -- mostly for herself -- “he had to go north for a real hockey team. UGA doesn’t have a real team, just the club.”

Richard grinned at her, wide and proud. “Exactly. Our boy’s one heck of an athlete! He earned that big scholarship. Of course he wanted to use it. But he isn’t going to go pro, so he’s coming home.”

She needed it to be true. There was no need to ask Carol why she’d talked to Dicky about Thomas, because of course Richard was right. Suzanne pointed the air conditioner vent at her face and looked out the window, wondering what she and Dicky would choose to bake that afternoon. She wanted something sweet and old-fashioned today, she decided.


End file.
